Which brand of DVD Recorder (standalone)do you have and why?

[bjtodd]

Was going to buy the Pioneer 5100 today - all £650 of it! Then I was struck by a moment of clarity - the burner inside is worth less than £100 and the 80Gb HD is probably worth about £50. What the hell am I paying the extra £500 for???

LOL! Same goes with the Panny E80H -- not worth the premium in my opinion. I'm waiting for the price to drop after they introduce their new line for 2004.

[lordsmurf]

APEX DRX-9000 because it gave a recording quality that was superior to all the rest. Especially at 4-hour mode.

[Timmychuck]

I like to buy the Panasonic DMR-E100,
becuase it has a Hard Drive


Can someone tell me what's DVD-A is
Is it a new format or what?

[donpedro]

Can someone tell me what's DVD-A is? Is it a new format or what?

DVD-Audio https://www.videohelp.com/glossary#DVD-A

[donpedro]

I wonder if this will change by introducing bunch of new recorder this year or if Panasonic can hold it's position by introducing new models.

[pan-dmre30s]

I got the silver panasonic DMR E30 myself over a year ago.

It has several flaws which are well known.

1- recover stuck disc cant eject problem (annoying)
2 - black level video bug
3 - bad media error handling (very annoying much better PC results)
- U11 issue (at beginning or middle of recording - disc is trash)
Cannot finalize any previous recordings..
- Multiple recordings or new video set without user input
(due to multiple errors occuring- disc is trash)
- recording and finalizing a disc with errors - disc is trash
- my favorite error is recording past the end of DVD and not stopping

And any other glitches I forgot.

I would probably still buy another panasonic however.
Maybe with a HD this time but I havent kept up with the features in newer models..

[starwarrior29]

Have had the Panasonic E80 for a month now and absolutely love it. Got it because of the hard drive, editing capabilities and the price was finally right. Only negative is the menus don't look that great but I will reauthor my dvds once my dvd-rom drive that reads dvd-ram discs arrives for my pc.

[FKrueger]

Philips DVDR75, got it for $399 thru a club I'm in, then a $200 rebate, final price with Shipping and handling and 3yr ext warrenty, $259. And I did not want the Ram ability of the Panasonics.

[netuer]

I bought a Sony because it has better picture quality for analog capture than Panny. I tried both with the same 2 VCRs (1 VHS and 1 SVHS) and a few VHS. I don't care about HD. I copy the content to PC, edit, and burn them on DVD+R.

[Cyrax9]

I have the Panny DMR-HS2 because I DESPISE Pioneer's junk after they sold me THREE Defective PC DVD-ROM Drives (Two were under warrenty adn I bought a 2nd replacement) and multiple defective VCR's. Likewise Phillips has been low on QA as well with a VCR that lasted about a week (The remote broke than the sound went) and CD-Writers that clunked out after about three months. At the time Sony had no DVD Writers available and I never buy first Generation anyway, the DMR-HS2 was the newest model and I wanted DVD-R not DVD+R and DVD-RAM seems to be getting EASIER to find with Toshiba also supporting it, so I went with the unit that in 2002 looked the best for the long term, which was the HS2 due to the hard drive and Panasonic;'s reliability whom I had other DVD-ROM Drives and electronic equipment from.

In short without Sony producing DVD Recorders and the other two either being DVD+R and/or brand sI'd recently had problems with, I opted for the Panny unit. It's too bad Sony will never support DVD-RAM because if they did I'd probably have a Sony recorder for my Sony TV, likewise I'm hoping that this years models will feature diual-layer DVD-R recording and all 9 formats of DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, DVD-RAM, Dual-Layer DVD-R/RW Dual Layer DVD+R and +RW, but I know that probably won't happen. I'd really like to see a recorder that has 5.1 sound capabilites for recording and the abilty to link witha PC among other features, it'd be great if I culd use my Set-Top writer as my PC Writer, a 5-Disc changer woul be great with DVD-A as well, which, admittedly is something I want for my new stereo system since I can do DVD-A on my new PC.

[Cyrax9]

I have the Panny DMR-HS2 because I DESPISE Pioneer's junk after they sold me THREE Defective PC DVD-ROM Drives (Two were under warrenty adn I bought a 2nd replacement) and multiple defective VCR's. Likewise Phillips has been low on QA as well with a VCR that lasted about a week (The remote broke than the sound went) and CD-Writers that clunked out after about three months. At the time Sony had no DVD Writers available and I never buy first Generation anyway, the DMR-HS2 was the newest model and I wanted DVD-R not DVD+R and DVD-RAM seems to be getting EASIER to find with Toshiba also supporting it, so I went with the unit that in 2002 looked the best for the long term, which was the HS2 due to the hard drive and Panasonic;'s reliability whom I had other DVD-ROM Drives and electronic equipment from.

In short without Sony producing DVD Recorders and the other two either being DVD+R and/or brand sI'd recently had problems with, I opted for the Panny unit. It's too bad Sony will never support DVD-RAM because if they did I'd probably have a Sony recorder for my Sony TV, likewise I'm hoping that this years models will feature diual-layer DVD-R recording and all 9 formats of DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, DVD-RAM, Dual-Layer DVD-R/RW Dual Layer DVD+R and +RW, but I know that probably won't happen. I'd really like to see a recorder that has 5.1 sound capabilites for recording and the abilty to link witha PC among other features, it'd be great if I culd use my Set-Top writer as my PC Writer, a 5-Disc changer woul be great with DVD-A as well, which, admittedly is something I want for my new stereo system since I can do DVD-A on my new PC.

[dafoe]

I bought the DMR-E20 back in December of 2000. There wasn't much out there. But I got a good deal on the unit.

Since I collect a lot of TV shows and sports games, I picked up the HS2 with the hard drive a year later at under $800. It works great and it loves the cheap Accu discs.

However, Panasonic's "Customer Service" does suck.

[Yvon]

To gspanos@comcast.net

I have the Sony, and I'm very happy except for one thing. I'd like to use the VR format for advanced editing, but the finalized DVD-RW disks won't show up on my Mac OS 9.2.2 desktop so I can create disk images. I've purchased ReadDVD! software to correct the problem, but it hasn't worked so far.

Sure would like to hear from anyone that has a fix.

If you have a Mac OS 9.2.2 why don't you do your editing in imovie in video mode instead of VR? The editing is much easier and precise. I do it all the time going in or out of the computer through the Firewire cable, using the Sharp DV-RW2U recorder. You can't get a better image in Fine mode. The picture is a clone of the mini DV camera tape.

Yvon

[gspanos@comcast.net]

I have a large number of musical performance tapes that I want to transfer to DVD. The Sony VR format gives me advanced editing features such as adding chapter markings between individual performances. What I'd like to do is do the editing on the Sony and then make copies on the Mac using Toast. But, neither the Mac DV internal drive nor the Pioneer external drive will recognize the VR formatted disks.

So, you're saying that I should transfer the tapes on the Sony using Video format and then use iMovie to edit them on the Mac. How complicated is this, and what software will I need?

Thanks for the response. As you can tell, I'm not all that knowledgeable as far as editing goes.

[bugster]

Recently purchased a Philips DVDr75.

Why this one?

Don't need the HD of the more expensive models (use Sky+ for 'capture' from sat)
Gives decent picture quality and I got it at a very good price (£219.00, region free, from richersounds (UK) ).

+R, -R don't care. Got -R burner in PC (Pioneer A03, 100% reliable).

Just for archiving movies and TV shows from sat its all I need.

[Shannafey]

I bought the Samsung R4000 because it was cheap - $250 and it's basically the same as the Panasonic E50. Has the same problems as the panasonics too, but for the price, I was more willing to put up with them. Well worth it!! Quality is damn good, even up to the 4 hour mode.

[rhegedus]

Was going to buy the Pioneer 5100 today - all £650 of it! Then I was struck by a moment of clarity - the burner inside is worth less than £100 and the 80Gb HD is probably worth about £50. What the hell am I paying the extra £500 for???

So, I went out and bought a new HD, installed it and sorted out my IUVCR software to to timed recordings. It might not be the one stop solution that a desktop recorder is, but I have far more control over it for a lot less £.

Still want one though - I'll just wait for the price to come down.

I finally broke after seeing it on the web for £600 for the multiregion model with free delivery. Ordered yesterday, arrived today. I'll do some tests over the weekend.

www.superfi.co.uk

[oldfart13]

I bought the Panasonic E80 because at the time it was the only available recorder in my city. It pretty well still is, though there are a couple stores selling the new Pioneer units. I'd like to get another deck later this year, perhaps one of the new High Definition recorders as this would fit in with my plans to completely overhaul my viewing equipment, including a High definition plasma TV, High definition satellite TV receiver and a new surround sound system. I'll just have to wait and see what will be made available to the market here in Canada...

[donpedro]

I finally broke after seeing it on the web for £600 for the multiregion model with free delivery. Ordered yesterday, arrived today. I'll do some tests over the weekend.

www.superfi.co.uk

Looking forward for review